User blog:MiniDaggers/RWBY Volume 4 Commentary Summary
Hey, it's me, Mini. Might be wondering where the next episode of the Volume 2 commentary transcript is, or not. If you are, then I do wish to assure you that it is coming, but it is also time consuming which is why i haven't made much progress. Life and shit. But do you know what is less time consuming? Making a summary of the more important (relatively... hopefully...) shit that is quoted and timestamped, that's what! So, without further ado, let's begin: Director's Commentary 1. Miles: Something that was um... In addition to, y'know, unveiling all these new voice actors but all these new characters, something that was really exciting for us was revealing that, Cinder, not only is she not the ultimate bad in this series, she's one of four. (Kerry: Yeah) Essentially. (Kowan: Yeah) Um, she, she's on her own little team of evil. - 5mins 20secs in 2. Kerry: Ev-Everybody has team names for different reasons. (Miles and Gray: Yeah) Is, is that what you think I was going to say? (Miles: Yep) Is that? (Miles: Yup) So, I mean, a lot of people wonder how far we've planned out um, and we like to stay flexible but I mean, we've been, there's things in these series we've been talking about since the beginnings before the first episode of the first volume came out. And one of the first things was Team (with Miles) "WTCH". Which Cinder is the C in and we've been holding onto Watts, Tyrian and Hazel since the beginning (Miles: Yeah) knowing that those would be kind of the four (Miles: Yeah), we, we call them the lieutenants (Miles: Yeah) to Salem (Miles: Yeah). We should probably come up with a fancier sounding... - 5mins 45secs in. 3. Miles: Aw little Oscar, the compost king. Kerry: Yeah. (Miles and Gray laugh) Did you see, did you catch that on the... Miles: I did. Kerry: On the... Miles: I, I uh, I uh, I didn't catch it until the episode was out, uh, and I saw the initials on the, on the little compost thing and I was like "Wait a second, is that, did Kerry... he did!" Kerry: Yeah. Miles: I mean, 'cause RWBY Chibi's your baby, so putting little like, shoutouts in the main series is, is fun to see. - 6mins 34secs in 4. Miles: The Petra Gigas was originally intended to premiere in RWBY Volume 1 (Kerry: Yeah) during the Emerald Forest trials. - 9mins 55secs in. 5. Miles: Corsac and Fennec were, were Volume 1 baddies. Kerry: Yeah they were, they were actually... they were the White Fang that was working with Torchwick. - 10mins 16 secs in. (Note: Similar to the Petra Gigas were they were supposed to be there originally, not actually was working with him behind the scenes. Wanted to be clear on that as I shaved a few lines off that established the context due to being a bit out of the way and would bloat this section out) 6. Miles: It was supposed to be a threeway fight, actually no it was a fourway fight 'cause they, it was a Giant Boarbatusk (Kerry: Yes) a Petra Gigas, Giant Nevermore and a Giant Deathstalker. And that was supposed to be a, the fight, and it was supposed to be a... Kowan: They find a camp out in the forest. Miles: Yeah. Kowan: Yeah. That was the (talking over eachother) okay, yeah, yeah okay. Kerry: There was like a White Fang, uh, camp, uh, in the Emerald Forest. Gray: That's right. Kerry: That just happened to be there, while the, the, like the whole first test was taking place. Miles: I can't remember how the Nevermore and Giant Boarbatusk were originally taken out in that version of the script but I do remember, the way that Junior or, sorry uh, JNPR and uh RWBY, uh, took out the Deathstalker was they, they tricked the Petra Gigas into accidentally crushing the, (Kerry: Yeah) the Deathstalker. We wanted to get a big rock to crush (Kerry: I) a big bug. Kerry: I can tell you how the Nevermore was taken out. Miles: How was it? Kerry: It was the slingshot that we used in the eight fight. Miles: Oh that's right we still had the sling, yeah that's (Kerry: Yeah) right, that's right, that's right. Kerry: Yeah yeah yeah. And the, and the, and the, the big Nevermore fight. I guess it was, it probably wasn't eight it was, that was the online releases, whatever. (Gray: Yeah) DVD when is, but um, the Nevermore fight in Volume 1, that slingshot idea came from the original first four episodes. - 10mins 32secs in. 7. Gray: For anyone who might not be clued in, do you want to talk about the origins of the Geist? Miles: Oh you're talking about the um, um... Gray: White. Kerry: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Um, so. So yeah when we're, we first came up with different types of Grimm we were just kinda brainstorming like what could be out there. And um, we wanted to have y'know t-this type of Grimm that could possess other things because we wanted to have, y'know a rock monster. Uh, not a rock lobster but a rock monster. (Gray laughs) Um, sorry made me think of it. And (Gray laughs) we, we were trying to justify like y'know, know we want the Grimm to be... y'know, more or-organic or more, um, little bit more like easily understandable. So we thought well, what about a ghost Grimm? I think that was one of the first things that came up and we talked about doing a poltergeist which turned into, because we're clever, Geist. Um, we're not clever, that was a joke. (Chuckling, possibly from Kowan) Um, so y'know one of the original things we're talking about is, is while uh, Monty's working on the White Trailer we're trying to figure out... why... 'cause the initial idea was just like she's fighting a suit of armour because she is (Gray: 'Cause it is cool) 'Cause it's cool, (Gray chuckles) she's Snow White, she's in a castle like, not the White Castle, but she's in a castle. Uh, like this would be cool and then, y'know, like many ideas it's like "Alright well here is the end result, how do we get there?" And we talked about yeah, the idea that a Geist is a type of Grimm that can possess different things. So, we start coming with different terminology. This was uh, a Petra Gigas, uh the, the Armored Knight was an Arma Gigas, um I think we had some others (Miles: There's a few others) but y'know (Miles is difficult to hear) that's for later. - 11mins, 36secs in. 8. Miles: So Jacques Gelè is uh, is loosely inspired off, uh, loosely inspired by, uh, Jack Frost and a lot of like little things about Jack Frost is like, in old stories it's like, and the rooms that he would reside in frost would grow around the edges of the windows like uh, fern patterns (Kerry: Yeah). So we, we, art team made sure to incorporate that into his office. Obviously a lot of cold colours and we had a line about how he keeps it awfully cold in there. - 27mins, 31secs in. 9. Miles: She very much has different ways of dealing with all of her lieutenants. Like, the way she will discuss things with Tyrian is, is radically different to the way she will discuss things with Cinder. Um, you know she doesn't want to, there's a lot of hostility between a lot of the bad guys. Um, particular in Team WTCH. - 47mins 20secs in. 10. Kerry: Did we ever talk about... this is such like a random one-off thing, uh, uh... how Tai and Raven's eye colour affect Yang? Miles: No. Kerry: We ever talk about that? Miles: No. I don't think we did. Kerry: This is just one of those things that Monty wanted to do that I think is just, I think it's just this testament to like... we just like goofy things sometimes or we just like things that maybe don't make sense but they make sense in a different way. Where uh, we knew, y'know right from the get go Yang's eyes are purple and then uh, as we designed Raven they were red. So then we started talking about Tai, he's like "Well he's got blue eyes then. That just makes sense." Miles: And we were like "Why does that make sense?" Kerry: Yeah, he's like "Well red and blue make purple." - 53mins 27secs in. 11. Kerry: Mistral, and the Mistral region are very heavily, uh, heavily Eastern inspired. That's kinda been, one of the ideas from, from day one is y'know, Eastern meets Steampunk kinda idea. So, um, we were trying to think of like how to name some of these villages so I looked up uh, I just looked up uh, names for Japanese flowers. Um and we had that wikipedia page bookmarked. (Kowan chuckled). Miles: Yes we did. Kerry: So y'know, there's definitely meaning behind all of the, the words. Which I mean... Miles: If you want a hint at what might go down in a certain village... Kerry: Well it's great because the fans look up that stuff and (Miles: Yeah they do) and I, I really love that they do. It's, it's uh, a blessing and a curse. Uh, because then when we don't mean for something to mean something and they (Miles: That's true.) assume that it does, um, so usually we, we like to do our research. -56mins 24secs in. 12. Kerry: They were essentially the second Faunus we ever really talked about or (Miles: Yep) thought about. Miles: It was Blake and then it was Corsac and Fennec. Kerry: Yeah. - 1hr 08mins 37secs in. 13. Miles: And this is our first time, um, introducing the idea of a passive semblance. - 1hr 56mins 49secs in. (Note, referring to Qrow's semblance) 14. Miles: Ilia's a character that we're really excited about for future things with her. - 2hrs 07mins 46secs in. 15. Miles: Something that's fun with Ilia is that and that we'll continue to explore is, up to this point a lot of our White Fang members have been very clearly on one side of (Kerry: Um hm) the spectrum and here we have somebody from the White Fang that, has some internal conflict, um about y'know, who they're fighting and, how they're gonna do it like she, you see her struggling all the way up to this point about whether or not she wants to actually attack Blake. Kerry: Yeah. Sh-she's letting that history get to her and, maybe not Sun, but yeah. - 2hrs 08mins 21secs in. 16. Miles: She could one hundred percent pass as human. (Kerry: Um hm) And uh, that's gonna be some interesting stuff that we explore later - 2hrs 09mins 03secs in. (Note: Ilia being referred to) 17. Miles: Hey Hanzo. Kerry: Yeah, what's up? (All laugh) Miles: So real talk, Kerry: We didn't play a lot of Overwatch during this season. Miles: In the script, it literally disgui-describes Ren's dad as I think it was like "A handsome Hanzo-looking motherfucker." (Kerry: Yes) As I think his description... Gray: Yeah, yeah and Erin was like "On it!" Kerry: Yeah. Miles: I don't remember exactly but, it didn't come up immediately until like, we realised it's like "Okay he's a hunter, he fights with a, a bow and arrow, (Kerry: Um hm) uh, he's uh a y'know Eastern inspired, he- oh boy." (Laughs) Kerry: Yeah. Miles: So then we were just like "Eh, screw it". - 2hrs 19mins 28secs in. 18. Kerry: Yeah, originally they hugged and I just like, it was one of those things where- Miles: We were running up against the wall on animation time. Kerry: Well we ran up against the wall on animation time and, and, we, we knew we were gonna kinda advance things with Ren and Nora. And uh, I just didn't want people to, to think that there was something going on unnecessarily. Not saying there's not, but I'm not saying there is. - 2hrs 21mins 57secs in. (Note: Referring to Jaune and Ruby in Kuroyuri after splitting paths with Ren and Nora, the moment near the tree) 19. Miles: Yeah Ren's semblance unlocks under extreme stress. Wanna talk a little bit about that or, or should we (Kerry: Sure) save for next volume or... Kerry: Uh... Miles: I mean you, we, we get across the idea that, it's able to essentially mask negative emotions and whatnot (Kerry: Yeah). It's pretty clear. - 2hrs 26mins 19secs in. 20. Miles: This was, seeing a, an ancient Grimm's lair like this, all the... weapons it's shed off of itself. - 2hrs 29mins 11secs in. (Note: Refers to cave Ren and Nora found after splitting from Ruby and Jaune) 21. Kerry: Hopefully we're going to get to see more of it in the future. Um, but uh, Salem's Keep just this y'know, they only use what the, the sections that are needed kinda thing. - 2hrs 30mins 16secs in. 22. Kerry: Actually what we're looking at right now doesn't have a lot of them in but, the um, the horse's mane is actually made just out of constant smoke. Like the, the Grimm aura that we have kinda growing off of people. That's what we've been calling it. - 2hrs 47mins 46secs in. ---- Done for now, may add some extra points in after another go through if I think they are noteworthy enough but until then, this is the summary. I'm not making a whole transcript yet which will cover all areas, that comes quite a while later. To mention, there is a Volume 4 Director's commentary summary on Reddit that I would advise seeking out. I've... Probably added stuff on here that they don't have, been a while since I looked at it. They have stuff I decided to omit due to judgement of importance which I may add later here or just leave it for the eventual full transcription following Volume 2 and 3. Either way. Category:Blog posts